Yeah, what they’re asking for is pretty standard stuff in other media. A friend of mine is an actor who played a scene where he had to shoot a masturbation scene. He was alone in a room with like 3-4 people: sound guy, camera guy, director, and I think the intimacy coach was there too.
Having a whole team watch you pretend to have sex is not okay, what the hell.
I mean, most of the team should be watching because they’re trying to do their jobs, not because they’re ogling the actors. And this is even more removed from sex than movies’ simulated sex, because I assume they’re in full mocap suits and everything.
Hell, you don’t even need both people doing motion at the same time, as long as you have the poses roughly correct. You can edit the motion curves to make the rhythm match.
I wonder if that would be a genuine use case for “AI”. If the voice actor consents to have his voice represented in such a scene but doesn’t want to play it out in a studio, the computer model could take over that part.
I don’t believe you’re wrong here in saying that. These don’t seem like unreasonable asks at all, and something I’d expect to be normal standards for the industry.
They are the bare minimum that should be expected. Honestly, the studios who did this should be named and shamed. The actors shouldn’t ever have to deal with this, and I’m sure the studio would lose far more money than they could wish to gain by being deceptive. It’s capitalism. They’re after profit. Make honesty the most profitable option or you’ll get dishonesty.
Yes, these precipts seem to be common in the TV industry
Ms Jefferies stresses the guidelines are not trying to put boundaries on storytelling … She says - and “these guidelines are just to bring it even more in line with the best practices in the film and TV industry”.
And I can’t think of news stories that show this is a problem in terms of leaking a story.
So, why not have the same degree of safety and protocols in game development?
With THIS context added, yeah I see why people are mad. I thought this was the usual “Video games are too sexy!” nonsense we’ve had ever since we saw Princess Toadstool’s ankles for the first time back in 1964… But uhh, wow… This
This is just outright fucked, I would even argue this could legally count as a form of sexual assault. IANAL though
ok so like, is video game acting like the worst field on earth, could you not just, refuse to do this? Seems like a fully reasonable thing to do to me.
And on the other side we have the Baldur’s Gate actors praising Larian for hiring intimacy coordinators and not requiring themselves to mocap the sex scenes.
Edit: Ah, just saw that this is addressed at the end of the article.
Yes, quite. I’m a regular practitioner of touch-stimulated emotional relief aided by intimacy content distributors on the digital nexus of information.
Actor here. Doing intimacy scenes is surprisingly difficult, arguably more so than combat, because usually people train and get certified in sword and dagger, rapier, firearms etc to get cast
When working a job, putting your mouth on another person’s mouth is a very unusual act, and you want your actors - regardless of gender - to feel safe, comfortable, professional and not exploited - not to mention you might spend 2x 14 hours days on this sequence from multiple angles getting it the same every time
Am I the only one who finds this story laughable? As a mostly console gamer, if feels like Nintendo releases games for $70, and they NEVER drop in price.
If you can find a walmart that somehow still has PS2 and gamecube games, the PS2 game will probably be some sports game, and it’s been reduced to $0.10.
The Gamecube game will be some kirby game, and still 2002 MSRP of $60.
Meanwhile over on steam, they’re like:
“Ok, this is a AAA game, came out in 2025, MSRP is $60, but we’re running a sale to pick it up for $5.
I don’t think the example at the end of your comment is relevant, since to my knowledge it’s the publisher deciding on pricing and doing sales, and steam is still taking the same cut.
I also think it’s generally not a great thing, since it basically puts the value of the game at $5, making it not worth getting off-sale, while also creating urgency to do so during a sale. I respect Factorio developers’ choice to just not do sales at all, and state so, so that buyers know exactly what the price is.
I think Valve does get some say in the amount and timing of sales. It’s something they need to control to arrange the big seasonal sales, and something publishers must agree to, or set an acceptable range, when first signing up.
My guess is that valve sends invites to devs and publishers and if they are interested to join they get to set their own prices. Why would valve even try to control any of that? If I don’t remember wrong I have even seen games not even released or getting a cheaper price in the festivals. Sales is probably the same but you need to lower the price a bit.
Yeah but don't publishers/developers also have the options to not partake in sales? I think they do, otherwise we'd see every game on the market all going for a sale.
Just in case you skip to the comments: the complaint is that actors are not being told anything about what game they are working on or what kind of scenes they will be doing. Then, they show up to the studio and they are asked to do explicit sex scenes or sexual assault scenes day-of with little warning or time to consider whether they are comfortable with that.
What a shitty title to the article. It should be "Actors demand action over unanticipated video game sex (and rape) scenes". Especially if the actor may be a rape survivor, asking them to act that out without any warning is idiotic at best and harmful at worst.
There are absolutely actors who are down to do that stuff but you can’t hire people with a script sight-unseen and just drop stuff on them that might straight up give some people a panic attack to even think about, let alone re-enact.
Title makes you think there are actors who don’t want games in general to contain explicit adult content, but this is 100% reasonable, and yet another reason voice actors and game industry workers need to unionize.
I bet your ass the same shit is happening with asset creators and animators.
I think they actually are unionized. At least in the UK. That’s what some of the Baldur’s Gate 3 actors said when asked about the anti AI strikes. They can’t participate because of the rules of their union.
If I recall correctly there is even a sentence in the article about the British union starting to tackle this issue.
In some countries, some people, in some parts of the industry, are unionized. It’s not even close to being the norm. It’s only slowly starting to happen.
Years ago I used to play tabletop RPG games. One time I met a guy and we became friends. We’ve seen each other on the weekly gaming sessions but every now and then he was unavailable due to other arrangements. At some point I learned he was spending some weekends with his disabled neighbor playing various card games and (pardon lack of specific language) some warhammer figure like strategies. I said I would like to be a part of those sessions and eventually we formed an unusual “fellowship”. Few years later when the disabled boy passed away, his mother said that these weekends were what kept him going.
There’s a lot of straight up porn games out there so who knows what kind of shit these actors end up in when they show up for a generic “motion/voice capture for video game” gig.
There have been a lot of borderline stunt castings over the years. Patrick Stewart was in like 30 seconds of TES4 and Sean Bean was in about 10 minutes of it. Hell, Bruce Campbell was in all of Tachyon: The Fringe (which is like the fifth best space dogfighting game ever).
But they were largely wasted. Kristen Bell… she is spectacular within a narrow range and “generic girl in the chair” is not it. And then there was the (alleged?) contract dispute that led to her being a baddy that gets killed off real fast. And that was largely the case. It was “get a b/c-tier actor/actress and find out that voice acting is very different than camera acting”
In more recent years we started to see a big emphasis on VAs doing the motion cap as well and Christopher “Teal’c” Judge made Kratos “I moved to a non-extradition treaty pantheon” of Sparta into a woobie. And people very much underrate how good of a job Camilla Luddington and a few other performers have done over the years.
But… we still have shit like Rosario Dawson in Dying Light 2 where “okay… she was there?”.
For its many many many many many flaws and problematic aspects, I think CDPR did an amazing job with their “stunt casting” for Cyberpunk. Because Keanu knocked it out of the park (when he wasn’t just talking about his magnificent cock) and everything I have seen of Idris Elba’s performance is similarly good.
And it kind of does mark a paradigm shift. Because it is no longer getting David Hyde Pierce to do a cameo as a camp gay counselor or a snooty over the top version of Niles. It is more like getting Ted Danson because you need a character who can simultaneously be a sleazy asshole and also the kind of person you just want to open up to and tell all your problems. It isn’t the kind of performance that you get for a single episode of sweeps week or to make people tune in even after your lead actor fucked off. It is the kind of performance you build a show/movie around.
The problem is that he really IS wooden and obnoxious for basically the entire first two acts or so. It isn’t until you have that conversation outside the motel (?) that he is allowed any range.
And… that is also around the time the game falls off massively in terms of quality. It isn’t quite Obsidian levels of “We ran out of money” but it definitely shows what they spent time on and what they just had to get working to release.
Which sucks because that is actually when they delve into the character of Johnny (particularly WHY he hates Arasaka so much) and you start having actual conversations with him… unless it is a side mission where they all default to antagonistic first hour mode.
I mostly agree with this. I really enjoyed the more insightful, introspective Johnny and there wasn’t enough of it. With that being said, I’m a few hours into Phantom Liberty and it seems that we get a lot more of the meaningful conversations with Johnny.
Sean Bean also voices most of Civ 6 and it's glorious. Say what you will about it from a mechanical perspective but I can't find fault with his voice lines. He gets to read some of the greatest quotations from history and for the most part he nails it.
Might just be me enjoying Nimoy in most everything, or maybe ta just that Civ 4 is still the best of the series, but I really liked his lines in that one.
Lots of memorable ones but “the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy” always sticks out as one of my favorites.
TESIV Oblivion is 2006, Tachyon The Fringe is 2000… 1994’s Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger has a whole IMDB page, with the likes of Mark Hamill, John Rhys-Davies, and Malcolm McDowell playing main characters.
And there’s earlier games with less stellar casts, like 1991’s Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum. Actors in games have been a thing for quite a while.
This kind of thing has been going on for at least 30 years. One of the earliest examples is Night Trap starring Dana Plato. You may not know who that is, but anyone who grew up watching Diff'rent Strokes certainly does. If you want a more mainstream example, look at Ripper from 1996 which features Christopher Walken, Paul Giamatti, Karen Allen, Burgess Meredith, David Patrick Kelly, Ossie Davis, and John Rhys-Davies.
Wing Commander III a 1994 release had Mark Hammill, Malcolm McDowell , and Tim Curry. Video game actors , voice actors and mainstream actors have intertwined for many years.
The game was kickass for a kid who loved all kinds of weird action games! I probably shouldn’t try it again and ruin my memories of it.
But a top down shooter where you could fire in different directions than you were walking was revolutionary for a kid who had mostly played metal gear solid on his new PlayStation.
Not surprised. But I had never seen a game like that by then. And very rarely after too. Most recent one I played was… Alien Swarm, I think? I loved that one too.
To be fair, they were often arcade games which required two joysticks. I had a game for my Amiga that I don’t remember the name of that used the keyboard to do it.
Valve forces price parity with all platforms. So if they have lower charges, that saving cannot be passed on to the customer and so stops price competition.
I did too but when I had a quick search around that’s what I found. I think it’d be reasonable to apply steam keys, valve is providing the full service there.
It’s the crux of the law suit? They are claiming that valve are applying it to non-steam key games. I think this is their website steamyouoweus.co.uk/faqs/
These price parity clauses apply to all games listed on Steam, not only those distributed via Steam Keys. As a result, other platforms cannot offer better deals, limiting consumer choice and keeping prices higher across the board. This harms competition in the market and stops other platforms from improving their services.
Though I do think the last part is nonsense.
It also says it in the article, though I suppose it is less clear:
The lawsuit - filed at the Competition Appeal Tribunal in London - alleges Valve “forces” game publishers to sign up to conditions which prevents them from selling their titles earlier or for less on rival platforms.
The suggestion is that they are enforcing this on somewhere like gog, where they don’t give you a steam key?
The plaintiffs making the claim doesn’t make it fact like you’re suggesting. The entire lawsuit is hinging on a single email from years ago. That’s not steady ground.
This is doubly true when you actually look at prices on other storefronts. How was EGS able to have lower prices or even give games away for free when said games were/are available on Steam at the same time?
It is the crux of the lawsuit, I don’t think I suggested anything. The original post is asking what they are on about. I replied with what they are on about.
Valve gives you free steam keys for your game on request, which you can sell off steam, without paying Valve a cut. This has a specific rule that disallows selling those keys for a lower price. However, not sure if it’s this case, there was an email from a Valve employee submitted as evidence telling a game developer that selling their game for less in general would be undercutting steam, and something they wouldn’t want. If the email is real and not a misinterpretation, Valve indeed was/is pressuring developers to not sell games cheaper elsewhere.
Also, sales and giveaways are exempt from the steam key price parity rule, which I would assume epic’s free games would fall under, if you applied the rule to that despite not involving steam keys.
Aren’t those keys for valve hosted games, meaning that they are taking full advantage of valve CDN… and so even though they’re being sold on a different site, they’re still being procured from valve? Way it reads to me, they’re not saying they can’t sell it cheaper on another market place, they’re simply saying if you’re using our infrastructure to distribute the game, don’t undercut what we are selling your game for.
Which doesn’t sound unreasonable to me… but I’m just a dude sitting in his office… so fuck if I know.
That’s just the thing - the publicly visible rules are about the keys, but the email that’s part of evidence isn’t about the keys. (Also, steam isn’t just distributing the game, but providing other services for workshop, cloud saves, multiplayer, forums)
Are these the same games that are part of this lawsuit? If they are not, then what does Epic giving away different games conclude that this is a false premise for the lawsuit?
Critically think about that statement, it’s not logical.
Sex scenes are common in modern games - and are often made by filming human actors who are then digitised into game characters.
Is “common” referring to cringey low budget Steam games? I don’t think I’ve seen any sort of on screen simulated sex in a game, ever. Granted I tend to only play well publicized indie games and larger releases. But how common is this? Am I out of the loop?
I only played partially through the first and the most graphic sexual thing I remember there were the little cards you'd get, which don't require any actors.
I don’t recommend it, but going bass-to-mouth was a very popular and hyped feature addition for SEGA Bass Fishing. I’m surprised this is the first you are hearing of it
The Witcher and Cyberpunk I’ll give you, but Mass Effect definitely fades to black before getting to actual sex, the other two are mods. I wasn’t saying sex in games doesn’t exist, but if we’ve gotta go back several decades for a handful examples, that doesn’t feel like something that’s “common.”
Yeah, there was a whole kerfuffle about it because all the files were still on the disc, therefore some jurisdictions re-rated the game to some version of adults only. Rockstar definitely did all the development work to get that sex in the game, they just decided not to show it in normal gameplay.
I think “common” here would refer to having to produce them, over the actual explicitness of the scene. Whether Mass Effect fades to black or not isn’t really the point when the voice actors still have to record the lines that play while the screen is dark.
ME is like cuddles that fade to black, The Witcher is funny little drawn cards you get after a fade to black, San Andreas was a mod as the actual function was never part of the released game - and those animations definitely were not mo-capped, no idea wtf a fishing game has, CP2077 kinda the same as ME but a bit more raunchy I guess. But even those very non explicit examples are a tiny fraction in the grand scheme of things, even among "adult" games.
Witcher 3 and cp2077 definitely had what i’d consider full sex scenes. Like, you don’t have full on piv, but it’s about as close as, say, TV typically gets.
Witcher 3 it is more explicit if you buy the services on offer in the brothel. But it’s still far less than one romp in Wicked Whims, which of course is all mods so no motion capture there
Actual sex scenes are incredibly rare. In most cases, which are still rare, it is implied with some cuddly scenes that fade to black. I think the most "explicit" sex scene I've seen in a regular game was in TLoU Part 2.
This feels like cherry picking (there is probably a better pun in there). The sentiment I saw when the servers went down was overwhelming support for the Dev and the happiness than an indie game is doing with AAA games can’t; bring down steam.
At that point it's just click bait then. the media loves to focus on a negative aspect of a generally positive thing to get people upset enough to give them attention. Thank you for the added perspective! I know this game has been super duper looked forward to by so many people and also wonderful that the devs made it at least somewhat affordable on launch. I would imagine they could have easily asked for 10 to 20$ more a copy and it still would have crashed the system.
I agree that there didn’t seem to be much negative sentiment and it was great to see. Just to point it out though: the reason Silksong crashed the store while even successful AAA-games don’t is that Silksong didn’t have preorders while AAA-games do, meaning there won’t be millions of people trying to purchase the game at the same time the second it releases.
This is such a bizarre lawsuit. I had to pull up the actual filing to make sure I wasn’t missing something.
Specifically, the PCR contends that Valve has abused its dominant position by:
(a) imposing Platform Parity Obligations (“PPOs”) that prohibit publishers, which market PC Games, from selling Products through other distribution channels on better terms than the same Products are available on Steam
This is only true if you’re selling Steam product keys, which I feel just makes good sense. You’re still selling something that’s on Valve’s platform, so you need to adhere to Valve’s rules. You can offer a non-steam copy under any terms you like.
(b) restricting the ability of users to purchase Add-on Content for games purchased on Steam through other distribution channels (a ‘tying’ or ‘anti-steering’ infringement)
…is there any platform where this is not the case for paid content? I guess for anything that has additional content available on GoG this is technically true by virtue of it lacking DRM, but where else would you even buy it in that case? Is there some other DRM-free platform from which I can buy Blood and Wine and drop it into my GoG version of Witcher III?
(c) charging publishers unfair and excessive commission rates for distributing the Products (collectively the “Infringing Conduct”).
The question of whether Valve’s 30% is “fair” or not has been beaten to death already but it is funny to me how it was basically the industry standard right up until people started gunning for bigger pieces of the PC gaming pie and started undercutting Valve.
…is there any platform where this is not the case for paid content? I guess for anything that has additional content available on GoG this is technically true by virtue of it lacking DRM, but where else would you even buy it in that case? Is there some other DRM-free platform from which I can buy Blood and Wine and drop it into my GoG version of Witcher III?
I’d certainly love to see this precedent set and apply to literally every platform, but yeah, Valve’s doing nothing unique here. And changing the law around these things could require games to change the way they’re made…the only way it seems possible to me is if every version of the game is DRM-free, but that might have the side effect of encouraging games to only launch on one platform (and that one platform would be Steam, making this problem worse).
Every game version has third-party, kernel level DRM that locks the acquisition to your net ID, barring you from downloading it on any other device. Here, done :3
b is fair tbh, but then you would have to sue everyone
c also apply to other stores too like Google’s and Apple’s since they also have 30% fee (google play and apple’s app store are left untouched and also are probably worse because they locked down a little more from their systems…)
This is only true if you’re selling Steam product keys,
While Steam does claim that, there were two previous lawsuits in the USA saying otherwise, and I couldn’t find any other info online, nor how they ended up… and they also have that thing that if you are going to make a sales promotion on another platform you have to warn Steam so they can do it first… if in fact you can’t sell cheaper on a platform that charges you less, that’s top assholeness.
Sometimes I forget how unprofessional the game industry still is or how little respect people have for well being of others. I’d like to say I’m surprised but that would require having some expectations towards those companies.
I hope more VAs speak up about stuff like this so we can have some real changes.
I’d say that isn’t the game industry, but it’s basically every company and employer everywhere. Nobody matters. Nobody is important. We’re all expendable seems to be the world.
bbc.com
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